Approximation
by lollipop-mania
Summary: Some nights — usually nights, but occasionally during the day too — he catches her looking at him.


a/n: this was written for _Shikatema Week 2017_. they are all consistent with canon and each other, but jump around time-wise. prompts were given by shikatemaweek on tumblr. search the tag for all the various contributions!

* * *

 **Approximation**

* * *

WAR

Some nights — usually nights, but occasionally during the day too — he catches her looking at him.

She isn't always looking his way. And sometimes, when she is, he doesn't quite catch it. He can feel it, and thinks, probably, her eyes are trained on his back, but he isn't ever able to confirm it. So he counts the times, long minutes, very often, where he does feel her gaze and can turn enough to catch the connection of them looking at each other for a moment before she looks away.

He knows what she is thinking. He is thinking it too. Probably.

Every day brings them closer to death. Shikamaru knows this, can feel it, viscerally, even if for a few hours after he's come out of a fight alive, it feels like the ever-present rumination of the end is now moving away from him. When he wakes up, achy and worn, he is always a little surprised to open his eyes once more. Shouldn't they have been attacked sometime through the night? Didn't word of Madara's location mean he was always just a few miles West?

He tells Temari this once. Tells her that he goes to sleep expecting that to be all, even if he had spent the evening drafting plans for the following day.

She doesn't look at him then. She looks away, down at her hands pressing into the table between them.

"Me too." She says.

When she looks at him, when she studies the back of his neck and the curve of his skull, she is thinking this too. She is thinking about how, for a long time, she had expected they wouldn't die. They wouldn't fight in any sort of war. They would serve their respective nations at a relatively safe distance and then, later, when they were married with children, they would pull further from their careers and settle into the reserves with a nice house and a good life.

That's what she was thinking, right?

It's what was supposed to happen. It was what he expected to happen.

Sometimes, when he does wake up in surprise and the awareness of his continuously draining pool of luck, he steps outside his tent at the same time she moves from hers. There is always a second, usually the only time these days, when they look at each other for the same few allotted seconds, and then once more, she will be the one to look away, already talking to him about something inconsequential and related solely to the war, not the fact that she loves him.

She does, doesn't she? Isn't that what it had meant, when she had asked him to kiss her? Weeks, months before now?

The war has swallowed them up.

But so what? At least now, when he does die, he'll die loved. Imagine if they hadn't been on their own that night, imagine if she had never told him to do it, imagine if he had died now, never knowing how she felt?

But then, imagine if he _had_ kissed her?

Would that change things? Would they have run away? Would he be beside her now, far away, declarations said aloud instead of passed through glances?

No. They wouldn't.

Right now they were too young to choose each other. They would fight and die for their respective country. For their alliance. For good versus evil, whatever that means.

So instead he just feels her looking at him, wondering, wishing, that everything she had always supposed would happen eventually _would_ happen.

It wouldn't. Their mutual survival rate is low. He makes executive decisions as the proxy that directly affect her chance of survival. They will both die. Or he will die and she will love someone else. Or he will live a life without the sole future he had desired.

That was what she was thinking, when she looked at him.

It was what he was thinking when he looked at her: how different things would be if this wasn't the end.

It wasn't a question. It would be different. He knew it as much as he knew any fact. They were supposed to, at some point, grow old together. That was what this was, what it had probably always been. She looks at him like that, looks at him like she is mourning the life that they won't get to live.

Some days — usually days, but occasionally during the night too — she spends all of her time purposefully not looking at him.

He can tell in how she avoids his eyes, but focuses on his shoes or on the horizon when she speaks. When he tells her, one day after a grisly meal of some out-of-season vegetables and four rabbits with not nearly enough meat to feed their whole division, that he loves her, she closes her eyes so she won't have to look at him.

She says nothing in return because to do so would be unnecessary, but now, when he does turn around to make his way over to the drawing board, he still doesn't feel her looking at him. He looks back, out of surprise at her sudden lack of continuity, but her eyes are still closed and her face is turned towards the sun. He can see the reflection of a line of moisture down one cheek. He wonders, absently, as he climbs the makeshift stairs in their temporary HQ, if it makes her feel alive.

* * *

TRANSFORMATION

"A rivalry," Choji says aloud, leaning further against the back of the booth, "ever since the Chunin exams."

It isn't a rivalry, Shikamaru thinks, but he can't quite think of how else to describe it, so he says nothing.

"That seemed to be a big start for multiple people," Ino comments, pushing her drink aside to make room for her elbows as she leans forward.

"You and Sakura were fighting even before that." Choji says quietly.

Ino rolls her eyes, seemingly angry to even be reminded about her youthful pettiness. "No, doofus. I mean about Temari. Tenten fought her too and aren't they in a rivalry now also?"

Lee practically jumps in his seat. "No!" He cries, "Tenten doesn't hate Temari!"

"Neither does Shikamaru," Ino says so quietly that only Shikamaru seated beside her can even hear it. If she hadn't been seeking the rise, he would've elbowed her.

"She doesn't even think she is strong enough to take on Temari! She sees Temari as a challenge to work towards."

Ino rolls her eyes again.

"Why he is even here?" She asks, still under her breath but loud enough this time for Choji to hear, and theoretically Lee, though he makes no indication of being offended.

Asuma had canceled on them at the last minute — by cancel, they really meant he just hadn't shown up, even though they had already ordered his favorite drink. Lee had passed by and sat with them without invitation, but no one had stopped him. It is a little late for Ino's question, so Shikamaru just shrugs.

"But you're working together now. You and Temari," Choji says, eyes trained back on Shikamaru's face. "Again."

"I'm not volunteering for the position or anything," he says, also leaning back. He should've ordered some alcohol. "I helped out in the diplomacy office once and now they just keep calling me whenever she comes to town. Plus we both — _randomly_ — were put on committees for the Chunin exams."

"You went to Suna too," Ino mutters. He ignores her.

"Okay," Choji alters, "so not rivals then."

"There _definitely_ is still a rivalry. He only became a jonin because he didn't want to lose to her."

That wasn't true. He became a jonin because she wanted him to. But he thought it was best not to add any more fuel to the fire of whatever conversation was happening right now.

"So," Ino asks, turning to face him, "what is it? How do you feel about her? Are you friends or frenemies?"

They weren't enemies. _Were_ they friends?

Maybe in the beginning. Then, when he was younger, she had always seemed angry with him. She was always going, always pushing for more and for better, and he had never wanted to stay in front of the crowd. But still, sometimes, she seemed to admire him. She would look at him, speak to him, sometimes, as though there were something better about _him_ —

about him, not about his technique or skill or intelligence

—that was _admirable._

Shikamaru exhales. "Frenemies? That's the stupidest term I've ever heard."

Ino scoffs. Across from him, Choji takes a slow sip of his tea and thinks of his question.

"Does she still want to fight you?"

Shikamaru shrugs. "I think so."

That seems dangerous though. They spend a lot of time together, but as he thinks about it now, they don't seem like friends.

If Choji and Ino are family and Lee is a friend, Temari doesn't come close to either. Recently, something has transformed. Everything about her seems tight and difficult. Rife with potential. Everything about her is _potential_. He can feel it. It hurts. Some days, when he is near her, he is scared to touch her, to walk close to her. He's noticed it for a while now.

It's like, suddenly, every single thing about her burns.

So no, never mind, friend isn't the right term either.

"Oh, Shikamaru," Lee pipes up, earnest in his every movement, "maybe she is in love with you?"

Choji laughs out loud and Ino rolls her eyes again. Shikamaru sighs. "No. It's not like that."

Maybe he is reading too much into it. After all, she is a few years older and a few lightyears ahead of him.

God he should have ordered something stronger to drink. Why the hell wasn't Asuma here?

"Wow," Lee breathes, "imagine." He looks seriously toward Shikamaru. The restaurant suddenly seems too hot. "You should persevere!"

"Yeah." Shikamaru says warily, leaning even further away and looking towards the door for someone (anyone) else to hopefully appear and alleviate the conversation. "Okay."

* * *

NATURE

Temari shifts, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the railing. He watches her lean over, her back arching slightly in a stretch. Her right foot lifts off the floor and she presses the ball of it into the front of her left ankle. She is more than a silhouette, but her whole figure is dimmed against the light of the sunset.

Behind him, Ino laughs loudly at something someone said, loud enough to be heard over the other chatter and the running water from the sink.

Shikamaru glances over to the kitchen. Ino has rallied Choji and Sakura into doing the dishes while she sits upon the countertop, legs crossed and grin wide.

He looks back at Temari, shoulders rolled back and down. He is sitting down, legs crossed in front of him, and from this angle, Temari looks much taller than she is, even at ten feet away.

"You want one," Sai asks from beside him, extending a mostly empty box of cigarettes.

Shikamaru leans over to take one, but then does nothing more than twiddle it between his fingers.

"I didn't know you smoked."

"I don't."

Shikamaru frowns and then leans back to face the balcony where Temari is standing. He hasn't spent any time with Sai in a few months, but he doesn't seem to be any more personable than before.

On the other side of the low table, Kiba had lit up the cigarette Sai offered him and was exhaling perfect rings to Sai's rapt interest.

On the balcony, Temari rebalances her weight and tilts her head to look further into the trees. The Yamanaka household looks into the beginnings of the forest behind the town where the Nara estate lies a few acres away, but the greenery wasn't nearly as dense or, in Shikamaru's biased opinion, as nice as it was from his apartment.

Temari knew that though, surely. He can picture dozens of times when his parents or a friend had happened by his place unannounced in the morning and Temari had had to sneak out through his back door and then through the forest, back when they were still technically working together.

He wonders, now, if a childhood in the desert gave her a different approach to vegetative woods. Did she find it as comforting as he did? Did she notice the difference in tree sizes and color between Ino's house and his?

Temari tilts her head again, this time to the left. He can sort of see half her profile now.

What is she seeing? What does she see when she sees his home? He suddenly remembers, about six months before, they were once in almost the exact same position, him sitting on the floor inside while she leaned out over a balcony into the sunset — except that was in Suna. What was she seeing there? Her home? Her memories? Her youth?

Shikamaru slips the still unlit cigarette between his lips. He is heavy with a full stomach and too much wine in his system, so he moves slowly, using the table as support to stand up.

"We can go whenever you want," he says, coming up behind her.

Temari turns her head more fully, but waits for him to come into her eye line rather than turning around completely.

"I don't have a light," she says when he appears beside her, mimicking her position to lean his elbows on the railing.

Shikamaru pulls his from his front pocket, but extends it to her.

Temari grumbles, "lazy," but takes the request anyway. He likes it when she leans in to light his cigarettes. More than that, he likes when she lets him light hers, which is a rarity. When she does smoke, he knows, she only does it for him.

She cups her hand around the edge and flicks open the lighter to catch the spark. Shikamaru breathes to pull the fire in. He holds the breath for a second until she pulls the lighter back and replaces it in his front pocket.

Shikamaru pulls away and exhales up toward the sky. For a second, the smoke makes the nature before him hazy, but a moment later the clean air dilutes his intrusion and the sun once more illuminates the trees.

"What are you seeing?" He asks, looking at what little of the setting sun he can see through the vegetation.

"Nothing," she responds.

He takes another drag and looks back down at her. Temari swallows.

There is an area of her neck, right behind her left ear, that he suddenly wants desperately to kiss. He can feel how her skin would be beneath his mouth; how his own lips are chapped and how that would feel for her. If they weren't currently in the company of others, he would lean down, but instead he just extends a thumb to brush it over the spot for only a second before pulling away.

"It's beautiful here," she says, blinking. It's slow enough to grab his attention. He leans forward to get closer, shoulder pressing against hers. "In Konoha. I mean. Here too. But everywhere. It's a beautiful city."

He's surprised — mostly by how happy the words make him. He had never felt as though she thought differently, or had wanted her to say something, but when she tells him this, he can feel it warm his whole chest in a way his barely smoked cigarette never could.

* * *

READY

"It was good to see you." Kankuro calls, cheeks pink and tone genuine. Shikamaru smiles back and offers one flick of his wrist in a wave goodbye.

Kankuro turns away, both him and Gaara walking side by side down the wide and empty street. It is mid-afternoon in Suna, but the whole place seems more empty than usual. Maybe it is because he is here, free and outside, in the middle of a weekday.

Shikamaru lowers his hand and shoves it into his front pocket. Beside him, Temari has her arms crossed over her chest. Her right wrist is bruised and he knows, probably, it is his fault, but she hasn't said anything and neither has anyone else. Maybe his whole memory of two days before is hyperbolic, but he does remember grabbing her wrist tighter than he would have liked to. That's problematic. The whole event had been, but that was neither here nor there anymore. It had been too long a time coming to have worked out easily.

Temari doesn't glance up at him even though she can surely feel his gaze boring into her.

She also doesn't make any move to leave from the middle of the street. They have just finished a large lunch and standing out in the beating sun doesn't feel too good, but she is still watching the retreating back of her brothers, breaths even.

The words come before he even knows that he is going to say anything.

"I'm prepared for you, I think."

Temari still doesn't look up. She just blinks, keeping her eyes shut longer than usual.

He really hadn't meant to say that. He usually is hyper aware of what words to use and of when to use them, but this had been brought out with some preternatural force without any predetermined purpose.

Shikamaru has thought it lately though. He has come to the conclusion that he is prepared now. He remembers during the war, when they'd fought (and, parts of them, died) side by side. He had known it was love then. He had told her as much. But afterwards, when he had prepared himself for death — assumed it, sometimes wanted it, even — he had had to find a way to rewire his entire psyche so that not every movement and word was expected to be his last. So had she. So had they all.

Even if he had loved her, he hadn't been ready.

Temari, still looking forward, exhales slowly.

"Finally," she says.

And that is all.

Shikamaru swallows. Shouldn't she say the same thing back? It was mutual, wasn't it? Two days ago, they'd slept together, but the day before that, she'd still been sleeping with someone else. She hadn't been ready. She hadn't been waiting on him. They had both come to the same place together.

"I'm ready for us now." He clarifies, sure of the words this time.

Now, Temari does look over at him. She turns her whole form and squints her eyes to ward off some of the glare above him.

"I know." She says. He watches the crease of her brows and the glean of moisture forming at her temples under the sun.

The morning after they'd had sex, they ran into one another before the stairwell into the Kazekage's building. Shikamaru hadn't been expecting it, even though she had already been the only thing on his mind for hours before; for half a moment, he had thought her conjured from nothing more than his too hazy memory and too strong a will.

But then nothing had seemingly changed. She still greeted him as she would have, maybe one more hesitation to her step, and they continued side by side into the building, going to the same meeting and ending up in the same seats they would have regardless of whether she had spread her legs or not.

And now, after having lunch with her brothers and a few other people from the office, they were standing together in the middle of the street like they likely would on any other day, except this time they were promising to stay like this for… well, forever. Or at least the foreseeable future.

"Me too," Temari says eventually. "I think I'm ready too."

He wonders, before this and briefly now, what that had meant for her. Did she wait like him? Did she consciously make the decision to keep him at the end? How many nights had she lain in bed, curled on her side in terror for a hollowness that she knew the answer to but was too scared to admit?

Temari smiles up at him and before he knows it, Shikamaru finds himself mimicking the expression.

"I've been waiting a long time." She says, practically grinning now.

He laughs, quietly, just for her, half out of the sheer ridiculousness of it all and half with the relief of a finality over a decade in the making. And only then do they finally turn around and begin making their way back through the mostly empty street, walking towards his hotel room, taking their time with slow steps. They don't hold hands on the way back, but as they talk about their upcoming meeting that evening, he likes the knowledge that now, if he did want to reach for her hand, to press his palm into her's and interlace their fingers, he could. And that was what mattered.

* * *

MARRIAGE

Shikamaru stumbles forward so violently, the front of his shoes catching on what he thinks amounts to little more than a pebble, but his misstep is so careless, he is barely able to catch himself before he lands face first in the dirt below him.

The worst part is, he'd been looking directly at the rock buried in the ground, making hazy note to avoid it, when he'd walked right into the thing.

"God," Temari drawls, paused a step ahead of him now. "You're such a fucking mess."

He looks up at her, beautiful in the amber lamplight, vexation and amusement caught behind her eyes.

"You're fault," he says, taking her hand when she extends it. She doesn't help in heaving him up at all, but acts like she is anyway.

She was the one, after all, who had kept ordering drinks all night, putting one (two?) in his hand even after he had told her he was through.

Temari laughs when he is righted up and the sound is suddenly all he hears. He wants to push her up against a tree and steal the noise for himself, absorb the laughter from her lips.

It's been a good set of months, maybe even over a year, since he's gotten really properly this intoxicated. He wonders if he'll even be able to maintain any sort of erection. He hadn't been able when he was younger with this much to drink, which was generally fine, because after trying for a bit, they would just pass out, too drunk to be lustful enough to feel unsatisfied. Would it be better now that he was older? Better able to handle liquor? Probably not.

"Let's have sex tonight," she says anyway, maybe thinking the same thing after she has stopped laughing. "Nasty, crazy, wild sex."

Shikamaru lets go of her hand and continues his steps, no more careful than before, further down the street, absently brushing the dust off the front of his teeshirt.

"That's a very formal proposition."

Temari jogs a bit to catch up before falling into step beside him.

"I generally like to be clear about things."

He laughs and smacks her elbow and then decides to jog the last bit of the street before turning onto the one that will eventually lead to the front of the Nara estate. "That's quite an overstatement, isn't it?"

Temari murmurs something under her breath while running again to catch up with him. They walk the rest of the way in silence. There aren't any cicadas out, surprising him when he notices. Weren't they out these days? A light breeze rustles some trees around them, but other than that, the only sound is the crunching of their feet on the dirt road.

It is a Tuesday night, to be fair, but he is mildly interested by the general silence. It is still early out. He had tapped out of their night pretty quickly, too drunk to carry on and relatively uninterested in hanging around and sobering up to nicer levels. Neither he nor Temari were particularly social, so they didn't go out that much to begin with.

They make a left at the entrance to their home, still nothing more than an apartment as his mother still occupied the main house and, probably for a little while longer, neither wanted to live with the other.

Temari takes the few steps up to the entrance quickly, moving ahead of him. He shoves his hands in his pockets as she grabs the doorknob. Her wrist turns and her form moves, ready to push forward in the way experience tells her to, when she is caught short.

Shikamaru, too, at the edge of the porch, weight on his toes in preparation to step into his entryway, almost stumbles back and off with the shorted expectation.

"It's locked," Temari says, jiggling the knob again and looking over to the window as though she might get a clue from there.

"Did you lock it?"

"What do you think?" She snaps quietly, pushing enough on the door to rattle it without actually breaking in. "Do you have a key?"

He wouldn't.

She makes a fist and raps against the door as though someone were inside.

"I didn't lock it." She mutters to herself.

In almost falsely coincidental timing, someone calls out her name. They turn around. Two houses down, at the entrance to one of the foot trails into the forest, Maen stands there, looking suspiciously awake.

"Do you need a key?"

Temari steps out to come shoulder to shoulder with Shikamaru at the end of the porch, "why is it locked?"

Maen lowers his head, sort of unsure, and steps forward slowly towards them, extending a large ring of multiple keys forward. "Your mother went around to remind us all to be safe."

Shikamaru, slow and a little wobbly, reaches to grab the key ring. He tries to send a smile to hide his vague annoyance. "No one is going to break into our house."

"Best be precautionary," Temari offers, assertively putting hands on hips. It's an argument with Shikamaru she'd long given up on, but a point she can still agree with.

"A locked front door isn't going to stop someone from getting in if they want to." He says, sorting through the ring for their set. "Woman knows we don't have the key," he mutters to himself, too drunk to be dealing with this right now.

When he finds their key and brings it to the front door, he already knows what is going to happen a moment before his hand fumbles and the whole ring falls from his grasp.

He sighs and reaches down to grab the ring again, pausing only when he realizes no jab had come from Temari, even though it was completely inconsistent with her character to not have said anything.

"Can I help you?" Maen asks.

Shikamaru glances back, bent over to grab the ring again. Temari is still facing Shikamaru, face blank. He meets her eyes, but she is offering nothing. Is she angry about something?

"No, I got it."

Maen looks a little uncomfortable. "Uh, okay. I'm going to go." He glances behind him and it's only then that Shikamaru even notices one of the deer waiting ten feet back. "I'll get them back tomorrow." Maen swallows and then turns around. When they meet, the deer also turns and walks beside him slowly. Shikamaru stands back up and watches them disappear into the thicket.

He sighs and glances over at Temari again. Her hair is down and tucked behind her ears, her mouth open slightly as she considers him.

She still says nothing though, so he turns back and finds the key again, still slow and head still on the verge of swimming, and then tries to fit the correct one in the lock. He misses the hole once. Then twice. His hands are shaking. He feels like one of those characters in a horror film that is about to die from too much adrenaline.

"Ugh," he says, kind of laughing, "can you do this?"

And then quickly, clearly without having even heard his words, Temari speaks.

"I'm in love with you."

There is something in her voice, something so resolute and serious, that he straightens much quicker than his head is ready for. He feels dizzy, but the gravity of her expression, the desperation to get something through to him, is almost sobering.

"I-I know." He tries, frowning. Shikamaru takes a tentative step to her, unsure. Her shoulders are rigid and the weight of her exhalation moves her whole chest.

I'm sorry," she continues, her cheeks hollow beneath the porch light. "I don't tell you that very often."

His mouth is dry. He takes another step towards her. He thinks on it and remembers, vaguely, saying something about how she was not often very clear not too long ago. He'd been joking, didn't she know that?

"Temari," he says, coming to a stop a foot from her. He tries to put intent in his words, hard when he is so intoxicated. When they both are. "I know you do. We've been married for four years."

She frowns and glances at the lock a bit behind him for a second before meeting his eyes once more.

"Yeah." She nods. "I just don't think I've told you that in a long time."

And then that's it, she takes a few steps forward and grabs the forgotten ring of keys from his fingertips and easily slides the correct one in without even really sorting them out.

Shikamaru turns at the click of the lock followed by the familiar creak of their door.

I love you too, he thinks about calling out as she switches on the house light and turns off the porch one. He doesn't though, following her in and closing the door behind them. It would be redundant now, as the mood had lightened. Plus he tells her often enough anyway.

* * *

LIGHTS

He catches her with her head down, attention so raptly paid to the papers before her, nose inches from the desk, that she doesn't even hear him enter the room. Or if she does, she doesn't offer him any attention.

Shikamaru halts, coming to a full stop the moment he registers that it is the top of her head he is seeing all the way at the far corner end of the desk.

He wants to call out, but the words won't come. Temari scratches a pencil against the top of a page before flipping it over.

If he is being honest, he'd come into the building with the hope of seeing her. Okay, maybe more than hope, with the _intention_ of seeing her. Of course, he wasn't _expecting_ to see her. He had only gone into this room to grab the files he was using as an excuse to come out for. He did need them. He had left them at the office accidentally. He was supposed to look at them more in depth tonight.

Only, he'd noticed his mistake when leaving work that evening, only fifty feet or so from the front steps. There was no reason, no obligation, prohibiting their retrieval now, but Shikamaru had shrugged it off anyway. Later, long after dinner, when he would normally be preparing for bed, Temari had a meeting. It would be no problem rectifying his mistake then. And maybe there was the off chance that he would see her in a conference room window or perhaps in a hallway by a water fountain.

That was all.

And he hadn't seen her.

But then here, a floor below where the meeting was happening, sits Temari, alone in the room, fingers tapping against the wooden desk as she drills her eyes into the papers before her.

And that's how it happens:

He has known how it would happen, for years, even if ninety-percent of the time lately, he's been hoping it would happen the other way; be the other kind. He's imagined the full scenario almost as frequently as her name has passed his lips. There would be the admittance — the confession, unburdening of decision. And then the slowness and the good and the _time._

It wasn't, he thinks, all that good.

Before that though, now, here with his rigidly buckled knees, she underlines something on the paper.

Sometimes, especially lately, when he sees her without expecting to, it makes him more nervous than when they have planned or otherwise expected interaction. There are butterflies in his stomach. They haven't been this alone together in a long time.

Finally, with effort and a short stammer, he says her name.

Temari raises her head, surprise already written into her brow.

"Shikamaru," she asks, voice quieter than normal, "what are you doing here?"

He takes a long breath and gestures to the filing cabinet behind him. "I left some stuff here." His hand in the air stays there a second too long and he belatedly moves it behind his neck to try and appear more settled than he feels. "I thought your thing was upstairs?"

Temari leans back in her chair and rests the pencil lightly atop the stack of papers, brows still furrowed. "We moved about an hour ago. They're doing some work on the wall. Something." She waves a hand, dismissing the reason even as she says, "it was hot and we couldn't open the windows."

"Where is everyone?"

Temari finally smoothes out her brow. "Went to get some food."

Shikamaru opens his mouth to ask about why she is still here, but then dismisses the question. Temari is staring at him, head tilted, but he doesn't quite understand her expression.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and rolls back on his heels. "So how are you?"

"Good." She leans back further, stretches her arms and yawns. "Exhausted." And then she stands. "I'm glad you're here." She rolls her shoulders. "I'm sore everywhere."

He huffs a laugh. "Well, you've been sitting in these shitty chairs for the better part of two weeks."

She rolls her eyes and then sidesteps to scoot her chair back into the table. "It's not that bad. You make it sound like I haven't even showered."

He laughs again.

"Do you have time for a walk?" She asks, checking her pockets to make sure she has everything important. "Just down the street?"

He wants to hesitate, but there is no reason to refuse. He has the time. He'll enjoy the company.

"How long do you have?"

She shrugs, walking over to him, "fifteen minutes or so."

As she comes toward him, weaving her way through the abandoned office chairs, he turns around to grab open the drawer with the files he needs. He probably won't be coming back here. They'll run into her fellow committee members towards the end of their circling walk and they'll part a few buildings down the street and she'll thank him for taking the time to entertain her and then he will go home and drink a few beers while quickly resolving whatever work he needed to do before taking a bath and heading off to bed.

He could see the conclusion of the night as easily as though it had already happened.

But then everything changed when he turned around and the light hit her at an unusual angle to cause a shadow in the well of her left collarbone.

There's nothing to it, really. The shadow just sort of catches his eye. It's a matter of her position in front of the nearest overhead light, of the way her dress had opened slightly and settled that way from her open-armed stretches, it's because yesterday he'd seen a posed photograph of their unit during the war and the image had stuck with him since.

And so the shadow — the lights — catch his eye and when he turns around, files in hand, his gaze immediately falls to her shoulders.

It's noticeable, clearly. And he only notices that a moment after she notices him.

Shikamaru's head shoots up, but she's already halfway through the sentence.

"What is it?"

"Oh," he swallows. "Sorry. It's nothing."

She straightens her shirt a little bit, and the movement itself redirects his gaze to her shoulder again.

"Shikamaru?"

She isn't asking with any malice. She doesn't even sound that curious. If anything, she is just letting his name leave her lips, only above a whisper. Still, it somehow feels like the air around him has suddenly and without warning begun to heat up.

"I was just remembering," he says, quieter, not daring to look away now that she'd seemingly given him the allowance. "During the war."

She'd broken her collarbone. He remembers the sling, remembers the fallen shape, how her left shoulder drew two inches below her right. He remembers sitting in the medical tent over a week after the initial injury when they had finally made it to a place safe enough to stop for any period of time with anyone at all capable of doing more than just moving the bone in place.

"It looks better, doesn't it?"

He doesn't know where the permission is, but somehow, he feels like he has it — like she had asked him to touch it. So he brings his hand forward. When did she get this close?

When the pads of his first two fingers touch her skin, she doesn't flinch back, as she had all those years ago when he had tried to see the damage. She does jump though, perhaps at the cold or the nature of the contact in general. His heart is pounding quickly. His lungs are working properly— he can hear his exhale, only really apparent in counterpoint to her held breath — but his head feels like it isn't getting enough oxygen.

He knows what is going to happen; what has always been meant to happen.

His fingers reach out more firmly this time, pushing gently against the bone, illuminated by the shitty overhead light, and then they push harder, hard enough to bruise someone weaker, he can tell.

He pushes his fingers down over the bone, pressed into the shadow, the shade moving as he changes the depth and rise of her skin. He remembers how the whole area was black before. His hands are shaking. He draws his finger down the tip and barely past the edge of her dress, licking lightly before coming back to the middle of her shoulder.

Temari exhales her held breath.

"Keep going."

He places his fingers down harder to stop the violent tremble of his own wrist. He doesn't continue down her shoulder, but pressed back against the top of her collarbone and then back down the other way, over the top of her chest and slowly — slowly — down.

He isn't thinking about the war now.

Temari is breathing so deeply, he feels the rise and fall of her chest, and facing her, his hand is going over her heart.

He doesn't get to push further though — doesn't get to bring the press of his fingers down to the bottom of her collar and to push forth to her breast. When he hits her heart, when the pulse beats once, under his fingers, his knees buckle and he pitches forward.

Temari catches him by proximity and without purpose. She takes his weight as he falls forward, stepping back until she hits the desk and then she can't go any further, but he has room for the extra step to come fully against her, hand curled around her neck.

She places her hand atop his, brings it to her jaw, helps him lift her own head.

"Quickly," she manages, "we only have ten minutes."

He knows what to do. He's done it before with others, even if everything about this feels different in every single way.

Shikamaru lifts her onto the table with one hand and when her legs fall open, he comes between them, hands over to her thighs, holding her legs in place.

Their first kiss, years later than the time she had leaned in when they were barely teenagers, isn't slow.

It was what he wanted — time.

But here they are, a few minutes away from separation, and so she presses her lips to him as though asking for the bruise. He doesn't think about how she has a boyfriend, because he knows she'll pick him. He doesn't think too much about how ten minutes is a prayer that no one else in the meeting group breaks off early and decides to come back.

Still, even as he finally opens his mouth and lets her tongue come to touch his without hesitation, lets her lips close over his, lets her hands grab at his skull and her ankles lock together to pull him and hold him even closer, he doesn't worry about the calamity of an interruption, of being caught in the Suna government meeting. He can feel the heat of her skin, the warmth of her mouth, the exhilaration of her touch.

He had wanted to lay her down, to pull off her clothes, to touch her absolutely everywhere before they even had the opportunity to make love —

but somehow, without proper reason, he's always known that this is how it would happen.

It's only seconds, really, and he feels it all pass in an even faster blur, fingers gripped around her wrist. Before he knows it, she is undoing his zipper and pulling him into her as he bites the spot of her shoulder he'd just been brushing his fingers against.

It happens even faster after that.

There is almost nothing about the sex that he actually feels. Nothing about how his penis feels inside her that he even notices. All he can do is just repeat her name over and over — in his head and sometimes aloud — for the few minutes he even lasts, just physically going through the motions inherent to man, breathing in the expanse of her noises, his whole body pulled taught like a rubber band — tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, the coming end seeming almost dangerous in it's potential.

Temari's nails are digging into him, but moving so quickly, he can't really feel any of the pain.

He feels as though he might cry. Maybe he already is. Everything about this hurts — too much adrenaline, too much expectation, too much emotion, too little time.

He wants to tell her, over and over, I love you.

Shikamaru finishes long before her time limit, so quickly, even he is surprised. He'd apologize, normally, but this was what they were both expecting, wasn't it?

She pushes him back, not cruelly, a few moments after it ends, and then immediately stands up to fix her dress.

They don't speak. He has nothing to say. He knows what this means. He knows that now, probably, this is it. This is how it happens and, in the future, it will happen again. Soon, probably. And then for the rest of his life.

It was always known, but now it is actually beginning.

She picks up the files he'd dropped in their haste and with only a _goodbye_ and _see you tomorrow_ in parting, he leaves.

His hotel room doesn't feel empty that night, even if lies awake until dawn, imagining and reimagining what the morning will bring.

* * *

GLASS

You taught me what it meant to love another person, to not just want to die for someone else, but for the first time, you made me want to live for one too.

I promise faithfulness and patience, respect and lightheartedness, attentiveness and self-improvement. I have told you before, but I will swear it again, and I will repeat this to you anytime you ask: I will spend the rest of life by your side, as a partner and a friend.

Shikamaru blinks, frowning over the previously crumpled and then poorly opened and flattened paper. He inhales gruffly on the half cigarette he has left, and then pulls it from his mouth with too tight a grip. He holds the smoke for a moment too long and then exhales slowly enough for the smoke to burn his eyes.

He takes one final drag and then, never really committed the smoke or, frankly, shitty vows, he stubs the cigarette out in the paper and then re-crumples the whole thing, squeezing and tearing it into a ball that he would throw into the lake before him if the menacingly light object would sink and disappear from memory.

Ino had liked them when he'd written them with her and Choji yesterday.

But that was no surprise, was it? Ino likes sappy things. She likes them even more when they come from not particularly sentimental people. She'd brought examples over to this office and they had all sat around trying to combine the consistent elements into one.

Choji thought that Shikamaru was giving in too early.

Just be yourself, he kept saying, as though Shikamaru had any idea what that meant — and if he did, then any clue as to how to translate that to paper.

Anyhow, he'd tried that approach for the past two weeks and it had resulted in even more wasted paper than Ino's schematic approach had.

Shikamaru sighs and shoves the paper and now stubbed cigarette into his pocket.

How were people supposed to do this? He did believe all those things — he _would_ be faithful and patient, and he had never respected anyone more than her, but putting those exact words down on paper, mushy and seemingly disingenuous when read before a crowd words he never would say to her in private, regardless of how true they were, was too… _much_.

There are things Shikamaru does wish he could tell her; certain things he wishes he could get across.

It isn't that he can't say the words. It isn't that Temari wouldn't necessarily want to hear them. It isn't that she wouldn't understand them.

But how can you possibly write that down? How can you choose, in your story, what is important? Was the first time she ever looked at him more important than the second time? Or the most recent time?

It never felt that way.

God, he wishes he'd kept the cigarette. There was still half left! What had he been thinking?

Shikamaru fumbles into his jacket to pull out his almost empty pack.

This whole wedding thing has him smoking again. She hasn't said anything, but he knows she doesn't like it.

He lights up and takes a long drag. A light breeze ripples through the trees surrounding the lake and makes the grass at his feet rise up to lick his ankles.

How does one do this? Choose the important bits? Write down any words that can approximate love?

He sees the word ( _love love love_ ) written over and over, but that doesn't encapsulate everything. Words can only approximate this feeling. Maybe that is why everything always seems too deceitful?

Shikamaru takes an even longer inhalation.

There is less than a week left and he doesn't even know where to start.

At the beginning? Which beginning? He'd been in love with her for so long, he struggled to remember what life looked like before she was a part of it.

She changed everything.

When he was younger, much younger, he had thought that you couldn't be in love with someone unless you were with them. He never understood the movies where characters loved someone from afar. Or how so many of his classmates seemed to love someone (Uchiha, mainly) without knowing anything about them that couldn't be gleaned from a data book and a photograph.

He had thought, rationally really, that so much of what it meant to be in love was knowing that the person loved you too; was knowing what they looked like drinking coffee in the morning, was memorizing which shoes they took off first when arriving home too late. Idolization or far-off hypotheses of love with someone you had never been in a physical relationship with were just exaggerate crushes, not love. After all, how could you really love someone if you didn't know them in a relationship? That was different. That brought out different sides of people that wouldn't be seen before.

Except then came along Temari.

He loved her for years without holding her hand. She's probably always interested him, and then one day, sneaking along in disguise for months before he'd even tried to parse it out, he was in love. Love!

How can he tell her that? Tell her that he's always loved her?

She knows, of course. He's even told her, a few times.

But that doesn't encompass the weight of it. I've loved you for years, or some other (better) variation doesn't give the full meaning. The approximation is so far off from how he really feels.

Shikamaru inhales again and holds it until his throat hurts.

He wants to scream.

 _Fuck_.

Good thing he didn't drown the paper from yesterday. Maybe when he unwraps it this time, it'll seem a bit better.

There is a cough behind him. He doesn't turn. He'd seen her coming from over the far hill, a long walk away, ten minutes before.

"What are you doing?"

Shikamaru exhales and shakes out the burnt end of his cigarette.

"Nothing. Thinking."

She comes to his side and purposefully leans close enough for him to throw an arm around her shoulders. It's chilly and she huddles against his ribs, shoulders hunching.

"Anything interesting?"

Shikamaru shakes his head. He hasn't told her anything about it. After all, she hadn't mentioned anything either. The wedding is only a week away. She had probably written them with ease a week after he proposed.

Temari sighs and looks forward at the lake.

The water is still and perfectly reflective, the sky and trees mirrored exactly before them.

"It's an eerie clarity," she says, "like glass. A bad omen, maybe."

Shikamaru gives a short laugh and bites the bullet. "I was trying to write my vows."

Temari holds her breath and then a moment later pulls away so his arm falls limply by his side. She looks up at him incredulously.

"Vows? For the wedding?"

He frowns. "I've been struggling." She opens her mouth, but he stops her. "I don't mean anything by it. I'm just… trying to find the right way to say everything." He kind of shrugs to lighten the mood. "But you already know everything anyway."

"We're not doing vows," Temari snaps. "Not at all."

He stops. "What?"

"I thought we agreed to not have any? I could never do anything so public."

Shikamaru also steps back from her. "What? No." He tries to remember, thinks it over as quickly as he can. "You said I'd better think of something clever."

"I was being sarcastic!" Temari laughs, loudly. "Oh my god, that was weeks ago! You've been trying since then?"

The relief that washes over him is… well, unable to be approximated by words alone.

Now, lighter than he's been in a little while, he fishes out the crumpled paper. Taking the blunted cigarette out and handing the rest to her.

"Here's my last attempt."

Temari reads less than one line before she is laughing so hard she starts crying.

"I take it all back," she says, gripping the paper tightly in her fingers as she backs up, moving fully out of his reach. "We're definitely doing vows. This is perfect!"

Shikamaru takes another drag of his cigarette and lets her finish, moving further and further away, and then by the time she is rereading it — he can tell because now she is whispering it to herself — he starts running over to her to grab it back before she can make even more a fool of him.

"I'll live for you too," Temari keeps saying, over and over as he tries to grab the paper back from her, tears in her eyes and grin wide.

He knows she's joking, even as he throws her down, but he smiles all the same because also, she kind of isn't.

* * *

honestly, i had to look up those vows too. i hope the happy and nice couple i stole (edited though, but generally the same) are still going strong!

okay. thank you all for reading. i had a lot of fun participating. let me know what you think!

(i'll be back sometime late summer or early fall with tsafv2)


End file.
